Chapter 1
Madeleine was happy. She had finished high school a year ago, she had a loving boyfriend and she had moved out. She was happy, but not quite content.
For almost all her life, Madeleine had been a ward of the state. In other words, an orphan.
She had no memory of real family, just kids she had gotten to know. Sad kids who were whisked away as soon as they started to get along. Madeleine was never adopted. At first when she was admitted, they were scared to give her to a new family because at the time she remembered nothing. She was found at the side of a country road. Just a little toddler. A little toddler who remembered neither her name or whether she had a mommy or a daddy…
Of course, they tried for several years to find her parents but by the time she was about eight years old, they gave up. Unfortunately, most people don't want to adopt an eight year old who had previous mental problems no matter how intelligent or cute she was.
So she stayed in the orphanage and coped with it. She studied very hard, and being a highly intelligent child as she was, got straight As in school. Skipping a few grades, she started high school at the approximate age of twelve, got over 90% in all her classes and graduated with an average score of 97.5% at the age of sixteen. She had done her MCAT half a year later, aced it and got early acceptance into Harvard Medical School- she was on the yellow brick road to a hugely successful medical career! She finally got to move out and make herself a stable life…
An apartment of her own, university, a job, her boyfriend…
Only one thing was missing from her picture of a perfect life; parents. People who you visit on the weekend, who call you to make sure you're okay, people who will always stick by you and never go away...
Madeleine had often dreamt about what her parents would be like, in her head her father was a man of average height with an easy smile, brown thinning hair and glasses who was very passionate about cartography. She pictured her mother as a smaller woman with straight, strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes and a pale complexion. Just like Madeleine.
Maybe her mother liked to sing, or maybe she was a good cook, or maybe she liked to sing and cook at the same time even if she wasn't good at either and knew it. Maybe her father liked to hike, maybe her mother liked to go to the ocean… Her ponderings were endless.
What else would an abandoned child think about but her parents? There was one thing that she would try never to think about; the possibility that she had no parents.
Over the years, she had started to think less and less about her parents and increasingly more about her studies and love life. She had in other words, given up hope of ever finding the one thing she longed for most in the world.
.